When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 4:17), he intended that the whole life of believers should be one of repentance.

From the 1840’s until 1950 America enjoyed a golden age of Christianity. As there have been rises and falls of golden ages in the church throughout history (consult the biblical books of the Judges and of the Kings), so this country is now in a precipitous fall from its golden age of gospel belief.

A new generation has arisen in American Christendom in general, and in Lutheranism in particular, which “knows not Joseph,” that is, which does not have a love for the biblical truth which its forefathers had.

If God were to raise up a Martin Luther today, most Lutherans would refuse to join his church.

Conditions in American Christian churches today are as they were in Ezekiel’s day. Rulers, clergy and laity alike have departed from God. Orthodoxy has vanished. The American clergy, as the temple priests, deceitfully have done violence to the Word of God by making their departures from it seem to be in conformity with it, and have made no distinction between the holy and the secular before men (Ezekiel 22:26).

While our government respects the freedom of religion, the Almighty does not.

The Lutheran church at large also has gone whoring after worldliness, and has injected the same ever increasingly into its creed, practice, and worship.

Because of their defection from the truth, the Lutheran synods in America should change their name to “Ichabod,” that is, “the glory has departed.”

The liberty with which Luther had set Christendom free will soon be gone and another Dark Age will set in, for American Lutherans have cast aside what Luther fought to bequeath them, even to the extent of complaining about it, as the Israelites did in the wilderness.

No Lutheran congregation could commit theological adultery like this with impunity. God must punish. He has kept his threat to do so every time.

Christians should be taught that a terrible storm is gathering on the horizon which will break upon the unfaithful Lutheran church in America (1st Peter 4:17) and upon the unfaithful American people. It will be a storm of divine punishment: the punishment of final resort after all of his less intensive warnings have been sent.

Christians should also be taught that as in the days of Habakkuk, so today God’s heaviest punishment, total war, will be coming as a consequence of America’s falling away from the gospel into unbelief. It will not be diverted (Exodus 15:3; Judges 5:8; Psalm 9:17; Isaiah 60:12).

Nowhere is it written that America is too privileged for its Creator ever to destroy it.

Americans who have fallen into unbelief have set into motion a divine curse which thunders: “Cursed are you, cities of America! It will be more lenient for Moscow, Peiping, and Baghdad on the Last Day than for you. They hardly knew the gospel. You had it in abundance. Therefore, you will receive the greater damnation; and you Washington D.C., New York, and Hollywood, who are exalted to heaven, will be cast down to hell.”

Christians should be taught that God’s punishment of America will consist of two things: It will consist of total war on Christians and non-Christians alike. It also will consist of the return of surviving Christendom to the hellhole of the Dark Ages.

Christians should also be taught that when the Bible prophesies in Revelation 13:12 that the papacy will rise again to its pre-Reformation dominance, this would include all of the consequences that would naturally follow, such as, another Dark Age and all of the terror and destruction that would go with it.

Christians should also be taught that the charismatic movement will be the vehicle by which the papacy will regain the world-wide totalitarian authority which it lost because of the gospel-strong Lutheran Reformation.

The charismatic movement is Satan’s revenge on the Lutheran Reformation.

Since American Lutheranism today is no longer gospel-strong, but anemic due to its self-inflicted weaknesses, such as, the following of theological fads and the injection of worldliness into its worship and teaching in order deceitfully to attract and to keep members by appealing to their sinful flesh, American Lutheranism will acquiesce to the charismatic movement and to the papacy in the future.

Yet the Lutheran churches in America are operating on the presumption that they always will be around.

The fact is that the vast majority of Lutheran pastors, theologians, and synodical leaders, who have not warned urgently their laymen about the charismatic movement, have not yet made up their minds that they are at war with the charismatic movement. They have not yet buckled down to the determination that this is an enemy from which they would need to defend themselves and against which they would need to fight. They have got the idea in their heads that they are going to get out of this scrape somehow by doing nothing, for they are still convinced that the charismatic movement presents no danger, that the papacy presents no danger, and that, in fact, there is no scrape.

Christians should be taught that the charismatic movement is that deceitful contemporary campaign of people who claim to be Christian, but who believe in gospel-destroying teachings.

Christians should also be taught that the heart and soul of the charismatic movement is that in which not God’s gospel promise, but the sensory perception of something beyond normal, a religious experience involving a sign, is made the foundation of salvation.

People are drawn today to the charismatic movement as many were drawn in Jesus’ day: to seek a thrill from the sight of a miraculous sign, that is, to worship at the shrine of supernatural titillation.

The determination of what is divine has been assigned by the charismatic to his flesh. The charismatic movement is the religion of the flesh.

After the seventy disciples returned “with joy” – elated over their extraordinary spiritual experiences from the power which had been given to them – the Lord checked their state of mind by commanding them to get a different state of mind, declaring, “Rather, rejoice in my gospel pledge!” (Luke 10:17 & 20.)

If you would be a member of the charismatic movement, but would not renounce it for the evil that it is, forsake it, and cling solely to one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Ephesians 4:5), then you will have the sensuous experience of seeing your Judge coming, and of feeling the full fury of his wrath.

While saving faith clings to God’s promise of forgiveness for its salvation, the charismatic’s faith clings to different unsaveable things for its salvation.

While true Christianity is by faith alone, by grace alone, based on Scripture alone, the charismatic movement is by flesh alone, by infused grace alone, based on inward experience alone.

The charismatic changes the function of saving faith into something other than the promise-clinging function which God meant it to have, with the result that the promise of justification could no longer be grasped by the sinner.

The charismatic movement has not been a Spirit-induced period for widespread conversion before the Last Day. It has been a deceitful attempt to lead people away from the safe gospel moorings into the devil-backed delusion that men could bring back the apostolic age of miracles at whim, and could extort from Christ his final return.

Historically, the charismatic movement is part of the great “falling away” from the gospel (2nd Thessalonians 2:3).

Doctrinally, the charismatic movement is related not to Lutheranism, but to Roman Catholicism.

Christians should be taught that the charismatic movement destroys the only bridge which God, our Savior, has set up between him and us to being us our salvation, that is to say, his means of grace: his Word and sacraments.

Rather than be occupied with the sober, systematic use of the means of grace, which is the only place where God has promised to come to us and to build up our saving faith, the charismatic would rather travel down the road of his own making to a glorious dream world of self-deception.

After an unbeliever would become a charismatic, his sinful flesh will be elated at the charismatic movement’s assurance that it could follow its feelings and experiences, and still be on gracious terms with the Almighty.

After a true Christian would fall away from the true saving faith, and would become a charismatic, his sinful flesh will breathe a sigh of relief because it will no longer be bound by the Words of God, but it will be free to define and to follow what it would determine should be divine.

It is clear that the charismatic movement wants to grasp greater power for its sinful flesh, not to desire, in all soberness, the cross-bearing strength of Christ which is only given out by his gospel Words.

Wrong is done to the Word of God when the charismatics have a thirst for a power which contradicts the Bible’s provisions (Romans 13:14; Ephesians 6:13-17; Philippians 4:13; Colossians 1:11).

In the spirit of the wicked heart of Simon Magus (Acts 8), the teachers of the charismatic movement lust after the supernatural powers bestowed upon the apostles by the Lord (Matthew 10:1), and deceitfully solicit others to lust after them as well.

Peter’s severe law to Simon Magus (Acts 8) applies equally to the charismatics that covet the apostolic powers which God has not promised to them, for they covet power and glory in the church, instead of being content with humble service (John 13) and with their cross (Luke 8:23).

Members of the charismatic movement deceitfully claim to have received powers which were given to the apostles. Yet those people who hold to teachings which contradict the Lord’s teachings (Romans 10:21; Titus 1:9), are opposed by him in turn, and, therefore, could not perform any holy miracles with his help (Deuteronomy 13).

Whatever works of theirs that are not feigned, but actual, belong to those lying signs and miracles of which Holy Writ warns (2nd Thessalonians 2:9).

When the apostle Paul asks, “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the gospel report of faith?” (Galatians 3:2) the charismatics would have to reply, “By the works of the law. To get our concoction known as ‘the baptism in the Holy Spirit’ certain conditions must be met in order to get the Spirit to be released within you. Someone must pray over you (the charismatic method), or you yourself must pray, be obedient, and totally yield yourself to it” (the Pentecostal method).

There are not two baptisms of the Holy Spirit, only one: water baptism (Ephesians 4:5; John 3:5), as the Nicene Creed confesses.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a figment of the charismatic movement’s imagination subject to its fleshly agenda, bias, and whim. It is an invention which the charismatic movement has brewed up that will allow it to steer any course which it wishes away from the Bible. It is a self-made license to deviate from any biblical doctrine at will.

Because the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a lie, the definition of the baptism in the Holy Spirit must be ever-changing in order to be kept alive. Since the baptism in the Holy Spirit is just an ethereal concept, its proponents must keep its doctrine likewise elusive.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is ideology, not theology.

They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that their “baptism in the Holy Spirit has been the gateway into a new dimension of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power,” since God’s Word instructs that rather it is the holy Scriptures that make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for all good works (2nd Timothy 3:16).

Though the apostle Paul has confirmed it twice, stating it both positively and negatively, “You are complete in Christ” (Colossians 2:10); “You come behind in no gift” (1st Corinthians 1:7), the charismatic movement contradicts this by teaching, “Believers who have been reborn by the Spirit as sons of God need the baptism in the Holy Spirit to fulfill the ministry which Christ gives them.”

There are three ways in which charismatics would ever seek to empower themselves as the self-anointed elite over the other members of the church, and to take away their God-given freedom. It is when they would imply that without their baptism in the Holy Spirit the average member would not measure up to the name “Christian and that his saving faith would only deteriorate into a dead faith. It is when they would establish a two tier Christianity: the ones with a baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the ones without it; the superior and the inferior; the perfect and the imperfect; the haves and the have nots. It is also when they would lead true Christians back under the law into slavery by insisting that in order to fulfill all righteousness, the Christian must experience a baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The Lord complimented the generous giving not of the rich who gave abundantly (Luke 21:1), nor of Ananais and Sapphira who made a show of it (Acts 5), but the widow with two mites (Luke 21:1-4) who, without need of a charismatic baptism in the Holy Spirit, gave her all.

Christians should be taught that the supernatural experience which results from a personal baptism in the Holy Spirit is, indeed, worked by the Spirit of God himself. The Holy Spirit does this in order to fulfill personally his threat to punish by sending a strong delusion to those who have refused to believe the truth (2nd Thessalonians 2:11-12).

In reality, the baptism in the Holy Spirit of the charismatic movement is a baptism of death. It causes spiritual death, because it is a death. In order to have a baptism in the Holy Spirit, a person must step out of righteousness by grace into righteousness by works.

To the paralyzed man Jesus did not say, “Son, you need a baptism in the Holy Spirit,” but, “Your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 8:1-8).

Not the charismatics nor the Pentecostals with their baptism in the Holy Spirit, but the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Matthew 16:1) were the first to demand a miraculous sign as necessary to prove divine credentials. Nevertheless, the Devil preceded them both (Matthew 4:4-6).

The charismatic’s carnal desire is to enslave his neighbor in his thought, speech, and work.

As the Sanhedrin, so the charismatics have gotten together – not in order to examine the plain evidence of the Savior – but to decide on how to get rid of him in order to retain their own glory (John 11:47 and the following verses).

As the magistrates at Philippi, so the charismatic movement has asked the apostle Paul to leave (Acts 16:39).

Despite the clear instructions and warnings of Scripture about the way of salvation, the charismatic movement deliberately has chosen to ignore these narrowly defined directives, and intentionally has set out in a different direction on purpose in defiance of Scripture in order to fulfill its own lusts, and, consequently, as Esau did, has sold its heavenly birthright for a morsel (Hebrews 12:16; Romans 16:18).

There is no renewal in the charismatic movement for its gospel doctrines are hellish.

The renewal ideology of the charismatic movement will destroy justification by faith and will teach infused grace after it would do four things. It would deny that Christ’s satisfaction was needed for our atonement. It would deny the divine work and the power of the means of grace (God’s Word and his two sacraments). It would teach that the Spirit will come in a baptism in the Holy Spirit after man would have performed some work. It would teach that the baptism in the Holy Spirit will be necessary to make the Christian complete.

The charismatic movement would rob terrified sinners of assurance in their forgiveness of sins.

Though the charismatics confess Jesus to be the Christ as the apostle Peter did, this gospel confession will be destroyed, in effect, after they would turn around and scold the very Words of God for what they have just said in regards to justification, as Peter also did (Mark 8:29-33).

The babblings which the charismatics define as ”tongues” are preferred over the use of plain language in the work of building up someone’s saving faith.

While the Spirit urges, “Sing praises with understanding” (Psalm 47:7), and, “Be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, in order that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him” (Colossians 1:9-10), the charismatics contradict this by teaching that a Christian would be better off unconscious in his praying, tongues’ speaking, and singing, declaring, “Praying with the spirit, unlike praying with the mind, does not call for mental conceptualization.” “The mysteries spoken in tongues are hidden from the highest reaches of human wisdom and knowledge.”

The vulnerable open wound of the charismatic movement is that it has no divine assurance from its sophistries and from its specious teachings simply because it has made them up; since there is no command or promise of God for them; and since divine assurance will come only from God’s commands and promises.

Whenever the charismatic teachers would force one of their sophistries through the intellectual process of their minds, they will display the unregenerate nature of their religious thinking.

The charismatic covets to see or to feel something supernatural, rather than to trust in the plain black and white promises of God, that is, he covets to walk by sight, not by faith in the gospel facts (Romans 8:24).

Every true Christian will listen to his Bible. As a result, he will look for and will find God in his personal sufferings, as a true theologian of the cross. The charismatic will find only Satan in his sufferings.

The charismatic movement teaches a perfectionism which is not the sole, biblically-taught sanctification, but a delusion which promotes pride, discourages trust in Christ’s holiness, and causes unlimited harm to the promise of justification by mixing it with sanctification.

The charismatic movement so alters the biblical doctrine of the second coming of Christ, and supplements it with false teachings regarding a rapture, pre-rapture, a time of tribulation, pre-tribulation, and a one thousand year political rule by Christ with his empowered believers on earth, that the truth of Christ’s real coming is confused, covered up, and deprived of its superlative comfort.

The charismatic movement’s spirit is fanaticism; its intent, pride; its motive, elitism; its means, deception; its purpose, to enslave; its object, you; its result, damnation.

If the American Lutheran clergy were orthodox, being faithful to the Lord (1st Corinthians 4:2) and watchful in all things (2nd Timothy 4:5), why have they neither spoken about the falling away going on in Christendom and in American Lutheranism, nor have spoken about its consequence: the coming war of punishment on America?

Today the vast majority of Protestant and of Lutheran congregations are spiritually bankrupt. The majority of them have a sense of spirituality about them, but not the one which Scripture requires. As a result, they have lost their biblical weapons of defense with which to fight off the cancerous spread (2nd Timothy 2:17) and leavenous permeation (Galatians 5:9) of false doctrine from the charismatic movement (Ephesians 4:14).

In order for the papacy to reascend to the zenith of its pomp and power, which is prophesied in Revelation 13:12, which it enjoyed before the Lutheran Reformation, it would first have to become unrecognized as the terrible Antichrist by the vast majority of the members of the Christian church.

Indeed, because of the widespread love for spiritual darkness that is rampant among the Christian denominations today, it has already become a popular activity not to confess according to the clear doctrine of the divine Scriptures that the pope is the Antichrist.

According to the prophecy of the divine Scriptures, the office of the False Prophet (Revelation 19:20; 13:11-17) will develop and give to the papacy great power. As a result, Christendom will lapse into spiritual darkness as in the pre-Reformation years.

How the False Prophet could cause the earth to worship the papacy, something which the papacy and his followers for centuries since the Reformation have not been able to accomplish, is that he will be able to imitate the effects of Pentecost, and thus to deceive the world into thinking that they are truly brought on by the Holy Spirit (Revelation 13:12-13).

Those future holders of the office of the False Prophet would be looked upon as restoring Christianity to its apostolic norm; as reintroducing the long lost days of the apostles; as returning a wayward church back onto the true apostolic path after wasted centuries.

In the future the charismatic movement, led by holders of the office of the False Prophet, will direct and lead any remaining Protestant or Lutheran denominations back under the rule of the papacy.

The office of the False Prophet will arise within the charismatic movement. In this regard, the charismatic movement has preceded its leader, just as the “falling away” prophesied in 2nd Thessalonians 2:3 preceded its leader, the pope.

The Lord could put an end to the charismatic movement, but biblical history teaches that the Almighty will send spiritual darkness as a punishment on those who would not love his truth (2nd Thessalonians 2:10-11).

The offices of the False Prophet and of the papacy will continue to survive until Judgment Day when, with the Devil – the three of them together forming an exclusive club –they will be thrown at last into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20; 20:10).

With a prophecy of the divine Scriptures in hand, you will have a help to understand and to believe it far above the mere deductive process of your intellect. You will have the almighty power of the prophecy itself to enlighten your mind with divine understanding and with full divine assurance as to its definite biblical meaning.

The prophecy of Revelation 9:3-12 has been fulfilled in Arianism, the first curse. This is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures. Sent by God under various names throughout the New Testament era, Arianism will continue to be a punishment until Judgment Day on Christian nations which have “fallen away” into unbelief.

The prophecy of Revelation 9:13-19 has been fulfilled in Islam, the second curse. This is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures. Sent by God, Islam will continue to be a punishment until Judgment Day on Christian nations which have “fallen away” into unbelief.

The prophecies of Revelation 13:1-8 and 17:3-18 have been fulfilled in the papacy, the third curse (Revelation 11:14). This is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures. Sent by God, the papacy will continue to be a punishment until Judgment Day on Christian nations which have “fallen away” (2nd Thessalonians 2:3) into unbelief.

Not only could the papacy’s spiritual enslavement of the Christian church be likened to the Babylonian Captivity, but the Scriptures prophesied that Martin Luther would use this very metaphor (Revelation 14:8) in his mortal wounding of the papacy (Revelation 13:3a) when he revealed it (2nd Thessalonians 2:3) as the Antichrist (1st John 4:3).

The prophecy of the Second Messenger in Revelation 14:8 has been fulfilled in Martin Luther. This is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures.

The prophecy of the First Messenger in Revelation 14:6-7 has been fulfilled in the apostle Paul (Romans 15:15-17, 19; 16:26; Acts 13:2; 20:21; 14:15, 17-24, 31; Romans 2:2 and the following verses; 16:27). This is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures.

The theology of the apostle Paul is nothing else than to point out the obvious in the divine Scriptures; that is, to point out the implications in and of the doctrinal passages. The purpose of this process is to reassure you of your salvation.

God will not leave his church to the mercy of the False Prophet nor to the papacy, but one more time, out of his grace, will send a messenger on the order of a Paul and of a Luther. This Third Messenger will be sent to rescue Christendom by leading it out of darkness into the saving light of the true gospel (Revelation 14:9-11), introducing yet another Reformation of and another golden age for the church.

The prophecy of the Third Messenger in Revelation 14:9-11 has not yet been fulfilled, though it most certainly will be fulfilled in the future. The truth that there will be a Third Messenger is a biblical doctrine taught clearly in the divine Scriptures.